WSB: (We covered) territory in the last class and I’ll recapitulate
very briefly some of that. I spoke about pictorial scripts and the difference
between a pictorial script and an alphabetical language. And I think that the
development of a practical pictorial script might be a real step towards a
universal language. However, the grammar of Egyptian hieroglyphs is very
complex, and the length of time required to write the scripts an obstacle,
which I don’t think you could deal with by even attempting to write the script.
And, instead, the attempt should be made to reduce the script to several
hundred basic elements that can be represented on slide projectors, or incised
on stamps, and perhaps eventually adapted to the typewriter [sic –
Editorial note – n.b. Burroughs is speaking in 1975)]. I think the practice of
conversing in this script would be a very useful exercisein
concrete thinking. If you can’t show it, then you can’t convey it. And also, no
one can really argue in a pictorial script, he can only present alternatives to
a given proposition. I think the practice in non-verbal communication would
impart more precision in the use of language and increased understanding of the
nature and function of words.

I spoke about (Alfred) Korbyskiand the various errors in Western thought he points out, and I
recommend it to you, this book[Science and Sanity] which you can
get at the Plants and Books on Pearl Street [local bookshop]. And I spoke
briefly about ESP. Now there are very very few good books
on the subject so I’d like to mention a few – There’s thisMagic-An Occult Primer by David Conway,
which I think is a very good book, I mean out of a whole bookstore-full of
these books, there are only about four or five that I think really are
informative and useful. There’s also, you probably most of you knowPsychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain, and they have..the same authors have now
brought out a book called, I think, A
Psi Handbook, [A Handbook of Psi Discoveries] which is very much more precise, tells you exactly
how to do Kirilian photography and all the experiments that are mentioned in the Psychic Discoveries Behind
The Iron Curtain. There’s a book by Monroe, Robert A Monroe,
calledJourneys Out Of The Body,which I think is the most informative and accurate
book on astral projection, and that can also.. I think they also have that in
the Plants and Books [sic - Boulder book(store)] there. This book calledReal Magic, by P(hilip) E(mmons) I(saac) Bonewits, (who actually has a masters degree in magic from
Berkeley), it’s..it’s got some good information in it . The style is breezy, and, even at times to the point of being obnoxious, but, there is some information.
One point.. one point he makes here I’ll read – “There are still more reasons
why so many people as possible around the world should have access to the sort
of information this book contains. Part of them has to to do with a top secret
government organization known among other names as theUnited States Parapsychological Corps. The Corps was an outgrowth of the teams of astrologers
our generals hired during World War II to tell us what Hitler’s astrologers
were telling him.Then someone found out that the Russians were doing
experiments with telepathy between orbiting cosmonauts and the ground. And, of
course, the British had the head-start on everyone. And suddenly the idea
occurred that a spy who could read minds would be invaluable and the concept of
ESP-ionage was born” – That’s an example of his style! – "Who came up with the
idea first we will never know but by this time every major nation in the world
has a Psi-corps composed of researchers and volunteers working upon applying a
parapsychological phenomena to international politics and international control. In the United States, for example, (actually, the United States is the country we have the most data
about), recruits are made of various psychics, occultists, adepts at
psycho-chemistries, and others with talents or knowledge wanted. The volunteers
have little or no choice in the matter. Then they are trained by methods of
hypnosis, sleep-teaching, and out-and-out brainwashing to increase their powers
and to use them only for the United States. In the United States itself the
major training centers are at the American University in Washington DC, the
headquarters of the National Security force, known as “The Citadel”
in South Carolina, some coal-mines in West Virginia, and an ultra-secret
training-center in the Nevada desert, just outside, the perfect town for
testing psychokinesis and ESP" - (he’s talking about Nevada, of course - the use
of ESP in gambling) - "The Russians also have an equivalent organization and
their training centers are in Moscow, Kiev, Leningradand Stockholm. The British have been the most practical,
their major center is near Monte Carlo. A point that I find most amusing is
that while Red China does not have a Psi-corps, it has some of the best magicians
in the world (the Chinese didn’t invade Tibet and carry back scores of
apprentices for nothing)” - That’s interesting.I surmised this some years ago when everyone said it was
sheer paranoia, that the United States would pay any attention to ESP

Now, I talked (also) about a very simple exercise that I call “the
walk exercise”, which is walking around the block, or wherever, and then
sitting down and writing that up and trying to remember precisely what you were
thinking at a given point (say, whether you saw a tree, a squirrel, a bridge or
another person?) . And it’s the remembering, that.. (of)
what you were thinking, that will put you back there.

And I mentioned an exercise of seeing everyone on the
street, subway, etcetera,before
he or she sees you - but sooner or later, however, someone will see
you, and (then) you will try to guess why he saw you, what
were you thinking when he saw you. So here I was. doing this exercise. I got
out at Sheridan Square [in the West Village, New York City]. Right in front of the door, an old pandhandler
didn’t see me. Crossing towards Christopher Street, I was seen by a
middle-aged man, reddish-face,
stout, grey overcoat, grey felt hat. He could’ve been a shopkeeper, small
business man, almost too ordinary-looking. And he saw me, looked right at me
and our eyes met. No expression at all. It wasn’t friendly, hostile,
suspicious, just blank registration like a camera shutter click. Now what was I
thinking?. I was thinking, “Well, I will have to walk across town
anyway to get over to Broadway so I might as well walk over to Ninth and
Broadway and pick up some clothes at the cleaners and then take the subway down
to Canal and Broadway". My guess is that this man was thinking something equally
as banal and the two streams of consciousness coincided for no other reason as
being on the same level at the same time. And on the subway a plump Chinese man
saw me (just a quick glance, blank, incurious, but, unmistakably, he saw me) .
Why? - Same reason, more or less. Same side of the street. (The Chinese are very
old hands at this game, remember).

Another exercise.. (I said there are many extensions of the
walk exercise) and another exercise is “walking on colors”. You pick out all
the reds on a street , focusing only (on) red objects – brick, lights,
sweaters, signs, and then you shift to green, blue, orange, yellow. I usually
do it until I run out of one color – and then I shift to another. I mean, I
don’t see any more blue on the street so I”ll shift over to red or green.Anyway, I was walking on yellow when I
saw an amphibious jeep, near the corner of 94th Street and Central
Park West, and it was called “The Thing”. And this reminds me of “The Thing” I
knew in Mexico. He was nearly seven feet tall and he played “The Thing” in a
horror movie called “The Thing” (and so
everybody called him “The Thing”) . Now I hadn’t thought about “The Thing” in
twenty.. more than twenty years, and would not have thought about him except
that I was walking on yellow at that particular moment. In other words, if you
practice any of these exercises, it will bring back memories through
association that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. And immediately the
story of a horrible Mexican Weekend came back to me as related by Kells
Elvins.

Kells’ wife and “The Thing” had been invited to the country
house of a rich Mexican. And looking forward to swimming-pools, luxury, good
food and drinks, they inadvisedly accepted.So they arrive at a barren stone castle with hardly a stick
of furniture, where drunken machos (that means much
man, muya
macho – and also much-sonuvabitch! _ We’re blasting at terrified cats
woth pearl-handled 45’s, while the cats ran around and around trying to escape,
which they couldn’t do because the doors were locked and bullets ricocheting
all over the castle (of course much more dangerous to human spectators than to
the cats, that were small and moving much faster). So, of course, Kells and his
wife and “The Thing’ were in favor of an immediate withdrawal, but they were
locked in like the cats. And the machos, five foot six in elevator shoes, they
hated “The Thing” because he was taller, so they held him at gun-point and took
turns spitting drinks in his face. We had to wait until they all passed out
before we could finally escape. Such is a weekend in Mexico. But this scene
(that) I hadn’t thought of in years was all triggeredby the amphibious yellow jeep, and those things will occur
in using this exercise.

Another thing, you’ll find that there is a relation between
what you are thinking and what you are seeing. Now, you often will be thinking
of something, and you’ll look up and see a street sign that will tie right in
with what you’re thinking, or, conversely, you may see something that will
relate to..will set off a chain of associations (like “The Thing”)

But here’s one a little bit more complicated. I turned into
133rd Street, off Amsterdam (I was going to my class at New York’s
City College) and a fire-truck came down the street and on it was written “Careless
Smoking Habits”. The truck went by and then on the wall was the word.”Michael”.
Well, “Michael” [Mikey Portman] is an old friend of mine and he was a junkie, in London, and he
used to smoke in bed, and he set mattresses on fire all over London (and he was
really a chronic repeater). And then, just up the street, there was the word, “Winky”, and “Winky” was the nick-name of Michael’s father. You turn up a lot of
these coincidences and it’s simply a matter of keeping your eyes open because
these things go on all the time. And sometimes this can be alarming. I remember
a young man recently came to see me and he said he was going crazy because everything
that he saw had meaning, related to him, or people that he passed on the street
seemed to be saying something that referred to him. And I said, “They are.
You’re the one that’s hearing it. It’s your
stream-of-consciousness”. So, when people become aware of something like that
that goes on all the time, it can be upsetting and they can get paranoid.

Now I’ll go on to the cut-up method, which I was just
getting into in the last class. The cut-up method enables the writer to touch
and handle his medium, move words about (his own words or anyone else’s words),
cut and make new words, just as the painter tests colors on his palette. Now to
show this process in operation, I gave one example of cutting-up a walk, here
is one cutting up (Arthur) Rimbaud. Now this
first page was made from Rimbaud as I leaf through theIlluminations,
picking a phrase here and a phrase there and typing them out on the page. Now
that, in a sense, is a cut-up already, because I was just going through and
picking a word here, two words there, and so on. Now what determines the
selection? -Well, an individual
scanning pattern is like the scanning patterns in operation that determine what
you notice in the street. In otherwords, it’s the same process, if you leaf through a book or a magazine,
just picking what catches your attention, it’s the same process, in a way, as
walking down the street. Now, in the street, this will be different with anyone
(I mean, what you notice on the street will be quite different, as I say, if
you have four people walking down the same street and you could see what they
saw, it wouldn’t look like the same street) – and this will be different, the
selections will be different, with anyone who shuffles around Rimbaud like
this, or any other writer. He will chose different phrases because they
intersect with his scanning pattern of the moment – If it is Sunday, for
example, he maybe drawn to a poem called “Sunday”. In short, choice is
determined by a complex network ofassociations in which the entire past life and conditioning of the dealer isinvolved. Sex is, of course, a strong determinant in scanning
patterns. People notice other people in the streetto whom they are sexually attracted, and, similarly, they
may notice and use sexual images in the pages they’re scanning (and if they are
inhibited, they may precisely avoid these images) . Now this procedure can be
compared to table-tapping, casting the tarot,
or the I Ching

Now the table-tapping by mediums to invoke Milton
or Shakespeare usually results in some excruciatingly bad poetry conveyed through the ouija board, but when you use the actual words of your poet as your tarot
cards, your tapping is more likely to produce results, since you’reusing the words and images of the poet
to invoke his presence.

I’ll give an example of this. Rimbaud, incidentally, cuts up
very well because you have very concrete images and you can see how they can be
shifted around, for example, you have “corridors of black gauze and banners of
raw meat”, well you can have “corridors of raw meat and banners of black gauze”
and each are valid and visual. But here is…I’ll just briefly go through. This
is the first selection that was scanned out of the book as I leafed through it.
It is, in a sense, already a cut-up but then I further randomized it and
fashioned it by actually cutting and rearranging it

“Horrible discovery in Greece. The old fool’s
cockeyed in a dirty main street” (I think this must refer to (Paul) Verlaine,
who was frequently cockeyed). Boats were hauled towards the sea and old prints.
The little boy waves his arms by weather vanes and cocks in the bursting
showers, Jackals howling across deserts of time growling in
orchard told me it was Spring. Military laundry in a dream - (I get a flash of
uniforms and socks and underwear, showers, naked figures) - Pale reflection
stirred this fugitive ship - (I get a picture of a ghost ship with a ghost crew
stranded somewhere) -Surrounded by
waterspouts, we’ve all been pale lunar figures crystal arms lanterns in leaves purple perfumes in corridors of black gauze. A bell of rosyfire rings in the clouds. Golden chainsfrom star to star, Rushing humof
human nights,
eyes vacant, flowering sweetness of arctic flowers raining in gusts of
frost- Mysterious music of black
gauze, banners of raw meat. Nakedness on pink and orange sands washed by the
rainbow. Sea sound of cities the red night. Amber andcrystal bone clash of
icicles against the stars”

Now, in cutting this up, incidentally, I got a title for
the novel I was writing, which is called Cities of the Red Night.
Now, as you cut it. Wecut the
pageand rearrange the sections which gives us new meanings and
images:

“Horrible burns and odious sweating boats of rosy fire” - (You
see, you’ve got a fire on a boat) . The little boy waves his arms from star to
star. A rushing hum a shower cock bursting eyes vacant madam has installed a
piano - (You get a picture of a kid
jacking-off in the shower while “Madam” is playing this piano, the landlady is
playing the piano) - Nakedness on pink leaves purple perfumes of cities of the
red night - (there I got my title) - Arctic flowers in Springmilitary laundry showers the bunks all
empty crystal arms in amber (crystal bone)

Now we cut the page and rearrange new meanings and images:

"Horrible the red night that
country fire the old fool’s cockeyed rushing from star to star - (you get a
drunken space-ship captain) – Pale reflections wreckage of the star shipwaterspouts
revolving pale remains – (and rearrange the sections which gives us “purple
perfume of burns the clash of icy boats corridors of raw meat" - "gauze in corridors of raw meat" - that
gives you a picture of a military hospital, where, you know, the people(are) covered with bandages)- "old prints gather flesh" - (then you see
an old print of a military hospital – rearrange the sections which gives us
“icy burns passages of old prints” - now rearrange the page and cut “the red
night”) . In other words, as you cut and rearrange, you keep getting new words,
new images from the original material.

Now, of course, the cut-ups, as I’ve pointed out, have been
used in music for a long time and they have had other applications. They’ve
also been used in films and.. how consciously… of course the line between editing
(what goes on in the cutting-room) and any random process is a very thin line,
I’m sure that cut-ups are pretty standard in films. So I’m going to say
something now about films.

to be continued - tomorrow

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at the beginning of the tape and comcluding at approximately twenty-fourminutes in]

1 comment:

I think the practice horrible, the clash of now, now I'll go, now the table-tapping – and this will be different – what you notice on the phrase, it's the same process, this exercise is a cut-up already